1. Technical Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to optical disk apparatuses that write information onto or read it out from optical disks, and more particularly, to a technique for reducing the apparatuses in thickness.
2. Description of the Related Art
Conventional techniques associated with the present invention include those described in, for example, Japanese Patent Laid-open Nos. 2002-352498, 2002-74800, 11-297007, and 2003-30862. Japanese Patent Laid-open No. 2002-352498 describes a configuration in which the driving means including the driving motor (feed motor) that moves a pickup (optical pickup) is disposed at approximately a midpoint position in the radial direction of a chucked disk (optical disk). Japanese Patent Laid-open Nos. 2002-74800 and 11-297007 describe configurations in which a feed motor for moving an optical pickup is disposed externally to the outer circumferential section of an optical disk. Japanese Patent Laid-open No. 2003-30862 describes a configuration in which a stepping motor (feed motor) for moving an optical pickup is disposed internally to a midpoint position in the radial direction of an optical disk.
However, for the techniques described in, for example, Japanese Patent Laid-open Nos. 2002-352498 and 2003-30862, since the amount of displacement of a traverse during its movement at the position where the driving means or the stepping motor is disposed increases significantly during disk chucking, the disk apparatus requires height large enough to accommodate the increase, with the result that dimensional reduction of the apparatus, especially, reduction in its thickness could be impeded. Also, for the techniques described in Japanese Patent Laid-Open Nos. 2002-74800 and 11-297007, the configuration with the feed motor disposed outside the projection region of the disk implies that the plane dimensions of the apparatus are prone to increase and thus that dimensional reduction of the apparatus, especially, reduction of its thickness may be difficult to achieve.
The present invention has been made with the situations of the above conventional techniques taken into consideration, and the invention is intended to make it possible to provide, for instance, among all slot-in types of optical disk apparatuses, i.e., the types that allow direct loading of a disk as a recording medium into the apparatus without using a tray, a casing, or the like, particularly an optical disk apparatus of the slim slot type or the like, wherein increases in plane dimensions of the optical disk apparatus are suppressed for dimensional reduction of the apparatus, especially, for further reduction of its thickness to 9.5×10−3 m or less, for example.